Covert Claudius, Confirmation Bias, Collateral Damage, and Coronavirus
[My blog posts usually explore some aspect of Shakespeare’s text of Hamlet. This week I hold up the play as a mirror to our times:
Claudius used “juice of cursed hebona in a vial” to kill his brother, a kind of chemical- or bio-weapon. But he lied: government propaganda claimed his brother was bitten by a snake, blaming nature for the killing.
In our own time, Chinese officials claim COVID-19 was brought to China intentionally by the US military during war games there in October, 2019, after a bioweapons lab in the US failed an inspection and was closed that August.
The US (US-friendly media) claim the virus came from a bat and a market where wild meat was sold (as if from a snake in nature’s garden).
Nature creates many deadly viruses. But many countries, including the US, have a history of taking germs from nature and developing them as bioweapons. (A recent book notes that Lyme Disease may have accidentally escaped from a bioweapons lab at Plum Island on the US east coast that was researching insects like ticks as bioweapon-delivery systems).
So while China and the US have their propaganda war about the source of COVID-19, what’s a non-scientist to do?
What might holding the mirror of the play up to these aspects our times reveal?]
Scholars have long noted various differences between King Hamlet and his brother and murderer, Claudius: King Hamlet is, in the minds of some, more honest and honorable. We are told that he was challenged to fight Old Fortinbras of Norway in “single combat” - meaning their armies were spared many deaths while the leaders fought it out between themselves. At least, this is the way Danes liked to think, or were encouraged to think, about their dead king.
Claudius, on the other hand, is more covert in his methods. He uses poison to kill his brother and lies about it, saying his brother was bitten by a snake while napping in his garden.
Some see the contrast between brothers as a contrast between a nostalgic view of a bygone era of honor and authentic masculinity, represented by King Hamlet, and a less virtuous, more cynical and Machiavellian era that followed. There may be some truth in that, but it’s very problematic: Even the legendary Trojan horse of the Greeks of a much older era represented covert methods more akin to Claudius than to what is perhaps an illusory and overly-nostalgic view of King Hamlet.
And King Hamlet was no saint: He was too busy with his exploits of honor to be present at the birth of his son, born the same day he fought Fortinbras to the death, risking his life and the possibility that he would become a permanently absent father to the prince. His killing of Fortinbras set in motion the chain of events that would later result in Young Fortinbras raising an army against Denmark, at first without permission of his uncle, but later perhaps with his uncle’s blessing, financial backing, and covert support for an attack on Denmark disguised as a war against Poland, with permission to march through Denmark, supposedly on the way to Poland:
...old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee
And his commission to employ those soldiers
So levied, as before, against the Polack,
With an entreaty herein further shown
That it might please you to give quiet pass
Through your dominions for his enterprise
On such regards of safety and allowance
As therein are set down. (2.2.1097-1105)
So it may be unrealistic dreaming to assume that old King Hamlet, Old Fortinbras, and the uncle, old Norway, are the only honorable and honest leaders, while Claudius is the only villain who makes use of covert methods. Some scholars have preferred to view Hamlet this way, with the dead king representing something like what Tom Brokow’s best-selling book calls “The Greatest Generation,”
and Claudius representing something like the way former CIA Director Allen Dulles is described in David Talbot’s book, The Devil’s Chessboard.
CONFIRMATION BIAS
But we all tend to project what we expect or would like to find in what we perceive. This is true of audience members at a play, of scholars analyzing literature, and also of characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
In 3.2, Hamlet and Polonius have their memorable exchange about clouds:
HAMLET: Do you see that cloud? That's almost in shape / like a camel.
POLONIUS: By th' mass, and it's like a camel indeed.
HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.
POLONIUS: It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET: Or like a whale?
POLONIUS: Very like a whale. (3.2.2247-52)
This exchange demonstrates not only how we project what we want to see onto what we perceive, but also how Polonius is too willing to agree with the prince in public, while also scheming to distrust and spy on him.
There is a similar exchange in 4.5 regarding Horatio’s observations about how people interpret Ophelia’s madness:
HORATIO: ...Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move
The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts… (4.5.2752-5)
When we botch up what we perceive to fit our own thoughts, or project our own desires on others and events, this sometimes takes the form of “confirmation bias,”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
when we cherry-pick information, or in other words, seek only or mostly what confirms our expectations.
PLUCKING THE HEART OF MYSTERY
We all interpret the world through the lens of past experience. This is necessary: Our past experience helps us make sense of new experience.
But new experiences always differ in some ways from old ones. There is an element of mystery in new experience, and if we assume all new experience is merely a repeat of the old, we will miss out on some of the reality unfolding around us while we are imprisoned in an endless tape-loop of past experience.
So If we are too set in our certitude that new experience is basically the same as old experience, in effect, we are plucking the heart of the mystery of experience: We are taking what is new and real and perhaps different in subtle ways from the past and from our biases, and blinding ourselves from it by way of a lie we tell ourselves: We assume we already know, we already understand this event or this person. So why pay careful attention? We are too happy in our nutshells, being kings and queens of infinite space. But perhaps eventually we will be jolted out of our slumber by bad dreams?
HAMLET: Oh, God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. (2.2.1300-2)
CLAUDIUS: LIES TO COVER CHEMICAL/BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
After poisoning his brother, Claudius disguises the murder with a lie. The ghost explains it this way:
It's given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forgèd process of my death
Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown. (1.5.722-7)
When people experienced in spy craft and covert military operations perform some covert act, especially if the act and its consequences are not totally shrouded in secret, lies are required to cover the deed. Claudius has successfully pulled off a coup, resulting in an overthrow of Denmark’s government. It’s a nearly bloodless coup in that his brother is the only fatality.
We might note also that the lie doesn’t claim the king had a heart attack, or that he was climbing his favorite tree in his orchard and fell when a branch broke. Such lies might stray too far from the evidence of the murder. The king was killed by a substance that invaded his body and poisoned him.
The ghost describes it this way:
Sleeping within mine orchard,
My custom always in the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour, thy uncle stole
With juice of cursèd hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distillment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigor it doth posset
And curd like eager droppings into milk
The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine,
And a most instant tetter baked about
Most lazarlike with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body. (1.5.744-58)
Such effects don’t follow a heart attack or a fall from a tree.
The ghost claims that the poison was a “leperous distilment” that made his skin turn “lazar-like,” referring to the gospel tale of the rich man who ignores the beggar at his door whose body is covered in sores licked by dogs. People of Shakespeare’s time assumed that the beggar was a leper, and leper-houses (or houses for people with skin diseases) had long been called “Lazar-houses.”
Note also that the poison Claudius used seems to have been not only chemical, but biological in origin. It may be a distilled liquid, but it seems to have come from a plant (a “botanical substance”).
Apothecaries may have studied and developed poisons in Shakespeare’s time and earlier in order to fight infestations of rats and other pests or vermin (or in other words, for “defensive” purposes), but it was always inevitable that such poisons would sometimes be used to murder, and on other occassions, the apothocaries themselves, or their families and friends, or innocent bystanders, may sometimes have been accidentally ingested: The family dog or an unattended infant finds and eats rat poison, and there are unintended casualties, or what military strategists sometimes call “collateral damage.”
To some, it might seem both a cruel irony and an example of bad karma, that a poisoner of vermin might die, or lose a family pet or infant child, by way of a concoction of their own design.
Horatio states this general idea in the final scene of the play when he speaks of “purposes mistook / Fall'n on th' inventors' heads” (5.2.3879-80):
HORATIO: ...give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placèd to the view,
And let me speak to th'yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning, and forced cause,
And in this upshot, purpose mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.
(5.2.3872-81)
In the dramatic economy of the stage, for Shakespeare as for Seneca, it was helpful and cathartic for the audience if evildoers suffer the consequences of their own evil actions, and sometimes best if their plans finally backfire upon them. But in Hamlet, of course, this is not without considerable collateral damage: Polonius may suffer the consequences of his own scheming, but the deaths of Ophelia and Gertrude seem especially undeserved, and perhaps Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as well, though perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent.
PLUCKING THE MYSTERY OF COVID-19
What might all of this have to do with the current Coronavirus, or COVID-19? Government lies about deadly bioweapons? What government would ever do such a thing? I beg your patience as I unravel some thoughts.
[image: CDC]
President Trump likes to call the virus a “Chinese virus,” even crossing out “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” in the text of his prepared remarks and changing it to “Chinese virus” - in spite of incidents of hate and violence against Asian-Americans and the best advice of some around him.
In terms of bias, Trump and some in the US would like to view the virus as Chinese, perhaps in part because they view China as an economic and military enemy of the US, in spite of the fact that many Americans buy goods made in China that are less costly in part because they are made there, and CEOs of American corporations profit exponentially from this. Low-paid American workers may love the cheap goods, but blame the Chinese for keeping their wages down. CEOs may take advantage of the economic opportunities, but know that as China’s fortunes rise with its economic power, their own fortunes may fall if they don’t act wisely.
Meanwhile, some officials in China have raised questions about the origins of the virus, claiming it originated not in China but in the US. The stark contrast between Trump’s view and that of these Chinese officials brings to mind what Horatio says in the opening act of Hamlet:
HORATIO:
At least the whisper goes so: our last King,
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras… (1.1.97-103)
Horatio knows that these are whispers, and that there may certainly be a difference between the way inhabitants and soldiers in Denmark, on the one hand, view these events, and how the people of Norway may view them.
Later in the same speech, Horatio observes,
HORATIO: ...Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimprovèd mettle, hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of landless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't, which is no other
(And it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us by strong hand
And terms compulsative those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. (1.1.112-21)
His parenthetical statement, “it doth well appear unto our state,” acknowledges that other states - especially including Norway - may view things differently. This is a helpful observation, and seems to apply not only to Denmark and Norway, but also to the US and China: In Denmark, certainly, the Danish view was repeatedly promoted not only by the throne, but also (in the play’s fictional world, we might imagine) by the press of the time.
And so we get a long list of US media outlets, and those of close allies, promoting the US view that the virus came from China, and that China’s claims are lies and propaganda. To include just a few, this is the view of
The New York Times,
CNN,
ABC News,
USA Today,
Foreign Policy Magazine,
MarketWatch,
Business Insider,
The Guardian (based in the UK, a close US ally),
and countless others.
If so many large and important media outlets agree, then does this prove it's true? Or does it prove that all of these western corporate media outlets have the same economic interests to defend?
If an untruth is repeated many times, even if many come to believe it is true, does that in itself make it true? How can both non-scientists, and scientists unaware of the research, know what is true about this?
It’s interesting that there’s so little variation in point of view, and that most of these articles are basically substance-free, not based on scientific evidence or scientific debate, but based entirely on promoting the American view in the face of the Chinese, which is viewed as untruthful. It’s almost as if we are still living in a Cold War context, where the CIA had assets inside of every domestic media outlet (and some foreign ones as well) in an official program known as “Operation Mockingbird,”
making sure that a certain desired American point of view would be promoted on important issues. Of foreign publications during the era of Mockingbird, for example, even the Paris Review was infiltrated and used by the CIA, as many have noted.
Modern methods for promoting the preferred national view dwarf the efforts and methods of Claudius and Denmark in comparison. The view preferred by Claudius was that his brother died after being bitten by a snake. And true or not, the preferred view of the US is that the virus came from China.
So pay no attention to that man behind the curtain: The Great Oz has spoken.*
via GIPHY
(In the Hollywood film, The Wizard of Oz, near the end of the film, they main character, Dorothy, notices that there is a man behind a curtain who seems to be controlling the frightening official spectacle she is witnessing; he notices her noticing him and makes the spectacle tell her not to pay attention to it….)
Especially for people in the US, are we capable of thinking critically about repeated messages from the media, so flooded with media assumptions? Or are we like people with our little children’s buckets and toy shovels at the beach, when the tide is coming in? How can we compete? As they say, if one is like a fish in a fishbowl or the sea, how does one imagine that beings breathe anything but water? How can we imagine any other point of view beyond the opinions we constantly swim in?
SPYMASTERS AS LESS-THAN-HUMAN?
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius is a strange case: He seems to be either the spymaster of the realm, or to think he is. In his skepticism and scrutiny of others, at first (in 1.3) he assumes the worst regarding the prince and his intentions toward his daughter, assuming Hamlet is merely like Polonius himself was when younger, projecting his self-assumptions onto Hamlet. Later, when Ophelia (in the second half of 2.1) tells him of Hamlet’s unexpected visit to her closet, Polonius realizes he misjudged Hamlet and says he is sorry twice. Yet he never apologizes to Hamlet for misjudging him: He only ingratiates himself to Claudius and Gertrude, and encourages spying on Hamlet in order to see if in fact Hamlet is in love with his daughter, and if that is the source of his madness. In this way, Polonius seems a hollow man, a joke, a dysfunctional human being, in a way. And perhaps in this he is similar to some other spymasters, including Allen Dulles, as described by David Talbot in his previously mentioned book, The Devil’s Chessboard.
US BIOWEAPONS RESEARCH:
CANCER, BACTERIA, ANTHRAX, LYME DISEASE, & POSSIBLY COVID-19
The covert weapon of choice for Claudius was “juice of cursèd hebenon in a vial.”
How were such poisons tested for potential use on humans?
Of course, by other murderers.
But secret research of chemical and biological weapons has included a much wider range of substances than what was perhaps the fictional poison used by Claudius. Testing has been conducted by many nations, including the US and China. Treaties after the world wars supposedly banned such weapons and research, but allowed defensive research, meaning research supposedly to prepare defenses against such weapons. Yet that supposedly defensive research has long been recognized as “dual-purpose”: In researching how to defend against a range of chemical and biological agents, one also learns a great deal how to create and deploy such weapons.
To people unfamiliar with the history of US bioweapons research, it may seem like what many like to dismiss as “wild conspiracy theory” to speak of such things. But in fact much of the history is widely known and has been reported on for many years. “Conspiracy theory” is too often and too easily used to dismiss thinking about actual things people have conspired to do, and in many cases, repeatedly accomplished.
Senator Paul Wellstone’s Efforts
Some of this came to my own attention in part due to the efforts of a senator from my state, Paul Wellstone, who was very vocal in seeking the release of documents related to US testing of chemical and biological weapons on US and Canadian populations. Wellstone, along with two members of his family and others, were killed in a plane crash.
Biological Testing
Sometimes this involved the spraying of biological agents to see their effects on populations.
You can read more about the open-air germ warfare tests from the following sources:
The Washington Post (archives/”Army Conducted 239 Secret, Open-Air Germ Warfare Tests“)
Regarding a single such test in the San Francisco Bay area, Wikipedia (“Operation Sea Spray”)Regarding the efforts of the grandson of Edwin Nevin, who seems to have died from the spraying, to seek full government disclosure and justice, see “How the U.S. Government Tested Biological Warfare on America.”
Chemical testing
Sometimes testing involved the release, in dust form, of chemicals like zinc cadmium sulfide, possibly in radioactive form, from rooftops: The goal was to see how these substances would affect the population. But a side-effect in some cases may have been that people down-wind of the release showed higher incidence of cancers, stillbirths and miscarriages.
You can read an archived piece from The New York Times *here*.
You can also read about it in this 2012 article from LiveScience: “Did Army Spray Harmful Chemicals on US Cities?”
There was an official investigation and a report published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) but while they claimed much is not known about the effects of zinc cadmium sulfide, the report officially denied any connection with adverse health as a consequence of exposure to zinc cadmium sulfide specifically. This frees the government from any liability for harm to health, while still recognizing the fact that testing had been done without citizen consent.
Yet the US government denied adverse health effects of Agent Orange (a defoliant by the US during the war in Vietnam) so as to avoid liability for the government perhaps as well as for the manufacturers of the chemical. One source, notes,
In 1988, Dr. James Clary, an Air Force researcher associated with Operation Ranch Hand, wrote to Senator Tom Daschle, “When we initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. However, because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide.”
US denials and resistance also involved not only veteran health claims, but also denials about the chemical having been stored at a US base in Okinawa before being used in Vietnam.
Nuclear & Other Test-Substance Fallout: Corrupted X-ray Film?
But this does not answer the question of whether other substances were used in tests.
Not regarding chemical or biological testing, but rather, weapons testing in general, it is known that, because of open-air testing of atomic bombs in the US, radioactive material was carried on the wind and settled on fields where crops were grown and where cattle grazed, as well as in populated areas. This was later discovered in part because corn-based products had been used to separate pieces of x-ray film to be used in taking medical x-rays, but in certain years, a great deal of the x-ray film was corrupted because of the radio-active dust that had settled on the corn. You can read about that *here*.
In spite of known contamination of X-ray film from 1945 A-bomb testing, above-ground testing continued, not only on remote islands like the Bikini Atoll, but also in Nevada, where local residents downwind were repeatedly exposed to radioactive fallout before the full effects of the fallout were known. You can read more about the effects of the Nevada nuclear tests in
TIME Magazine, “When Mushroom Clouds Were All the Rage,”
At Quartz.com, “US nuclear tests killed far more civilians than we knew”(the original title of this article contained in the URL is, “US Nuclear Tests Killed American Civilians on as Scale Comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki”)
From the Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Nevada Test Site Downwinders”
From Common Dreams by way of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting), “50 Years Later, The Tragedy of Nuclear Tests in Nevada,” by Norman Solomon
These historical facts are not secret, have been reported on, and are not “wild conspiracy theories.”
Lyme Disease and Operation Paperclip
It is also known that, after World War II, the US and Russia were in a race to extract certain German scientists and intelligence experts from Germany, and the US also sought to use some of these Germans to remain behind and spy. Some of the scientists were used in the NASA program, but others were used in bioweapons research. This postwar US program was called Operation Paperclip: One can read short pieces about it at
Wikipedia,
History.com,
Or even a book review on the topic at the CIA website.
One quickly notices that these sources are much more willing to discuss former Nazi scientists helping in rocket development for NASA and its space program, but little or no mention is made of former Nazi scientists researching bioweapons in and for the US. One New York Post article is perhaps exceptional for its mention of the US picking up a Nazi chemical warfare scientist, Dr. Otto Ambros. Relative silence on Operation Paperclip-recruited Nazi scientists who worked on bioweapons may be at least in part because NASA and the US space program to put a man on the moon, and to put men and women in space, is a happy and glorious US program, while US bioweapons research is a darker and more shameful shadow in US history.
David Swanson helps shed light on this. Swanson was a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, worked for the presidential campaign of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation awarded him their 2018 Peace Prize. His blog is titled, “Let’s Try Democracy.”
Swanson has researched, for example, how former Nazi bioweapons experts were used at Plum Island, near the north-east side of Long Island, NY, and not far south of New London, Connecticut, and also Lyme, Connecticut, after which Lyme Disease is named. The Nazis had been researching the use of insects as bioweapons delivery systems, and this research continued under US supervision at Plum Island. In an article from May of 2019 called “Where Lyme Disease Came From and Why It Eludes Treatment,” Swanson cites a recent book by Kris Newby called Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons.
It turns out that the appearance of Lyme Disease near Lyme Connecticut and its identification in 1975 was too coincidentally close to the Plum Island facility, which had been researching the use of deer ticks as bioweapon delivery vehicles. It seems very possible that the experiments were not contained enough, and that some ticks may have escaped and hitched a ride to the mainland on the backs of deer that sometimes swim across to the island.
Anthrax
Using animals or insects to deliver bioweapons is not new: After the US anthrax scare in the fall of 2001, many noted that Japan experimented on the weaponizing of birds and animals in the period between the world wars. In their book, Beyond Anthrax: The Weaponization of Infectious Diseases,
editors Larry and Suzanne Lutwick observe that Japan and the US did not ratify certain chemical and biological weapons treaties after World War I, and during World War II, they dropped plague-infested rats, and also birds and bird-feathers dusted with anthrax over certain populated areas in China.
Initially after the US anthrax scare, it was determined that the anthrax had not come from Iraq as George Bush initially claimed, but rather, that it had come from Ft. Detrick in the US, where they do - you guessed it - bioweapons research. The type of anthrax in the letters mailed to specific members of congress and the media, according to initial investigations, was a very special type: The US developed a process of removing the static charge and milling anthrax into a very fine powder so that it could be airborne, not normally one of its characteristics.
It’s interesting to note that this would be the initial determination, but that later,
the official report claimed the anthrax did have a static charge, although it was of such a pure quality that it may have been obtained from a US bioweapons lab, and that the person who produced it “must have possessed significant technical skill” (14).
Many are unsure whether the final suspect, Bruce Ivins, was actually the person who prepared and/or sent the anthrax. As the article at the link notes, Ivins told a friend that he had no memory of doing any such thing, didn’t know now, and didn’t care to know how. He sounded a bit like Sirhan Sirhan, the confessed assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, who some say was brainwashed: Sirhan stood in front of RFK, facing him, when the shooting occurred, and yet the fatal shot came from the back of Kennedy’s head. Like Ivins, Sirhan remembered nothing of the shooting. And the CIA was known to have been researching various methods of mind-control (as in its MK-Ultra program, not a conspiracy theory but a historical fact).
COVID-19
More recently, David Swanson has written about the feud between the USA and China regarding the origins of COVID-19. In a recent blog article, Swanson explores some of the various more substantial claims regarding the source of the virus. The article, from March 27, is called “Is Coronavirus a bioweapon?” Swanson notes that there was bioweapon research going on in both the US, at places like Ft. Detrick, and also in Wuhan. So he then discusses some scientific sources that may connect COVID-19 to both Wuhan and the US. It’s concerning.
Many have noted that, in early August of 2019, The New York Times and other newspapers and media outlets (including the New York Post, based on the NYTimes piece) reported that the bioweapons research facility at Ft. Detrick was shut down because it failed to pass a CDC inspection, a curious and concerning detail. Some claim a virus that caused fever, aches, and pneumonia escaped from the lab at Ft. Detrick and may have been brought to Wuhan during war games there observed by the US. In fact, my wife and I caught a virus in November of last year that included all of these symptoms, and I have heard of many others who did as well. That doesn’t prove any COVID-19 connection, but it makes one wonder.
On March 17, in the Asia Times published an essay by Pedro Escobar called “China locked in hybrid war with US: Fallout from Covid-19 outbreak puts Beijing and Washington on a collision course.” Escobar also mentions Ft. Detrick and the speculation about the source of the virus.
In Hamlet terms, all of this might seem like identifying the poison that killed the king, and striving to find the apothecary who was the source, in the hope that the apothecary might be convinced to blame Claudius.
But so far, especially for those of us who are non-scientists, we just don’t yet know. And meanwhile, the media blathers on about claims from the US and China, and one might find that it’s as likely to believe the US was responsible if one lives in China as it is to believe that China was responsible if one lives in the US.
If it were only a high school football game, the role of the citizens of each nation might be merely to cheer for their own side and for the views that are most favorable to their own team. But this is not a game. Lives are at stake.
PLUCKING THE HEART OF THE MYSTERY
In Act 3, scene 2, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing
you make of me! You would play upon me, you would
seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart
of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest
note to the top of my compass, and there is much
music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot
you make it. Why, do you think that I am easier to be
played on than a pipe?
(3.2.2234-41)
Not all viruses come from China. Even the flu, long thought to come from China, may have come from Southeast Asian tropics. But because of the totalitarian government there, some believe deaths from disease may be habitually under-reported.
And illnesses do not come only from wild animals that are hunted and brought to Chinese markets. Some in the US have contracted Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) from eating wild venison, and many others have likely contracted Lyme Disease.
If we strive to respect the mystery rather than pluck its heart, we might categorize some possibilities (while noting that this is not an exhaustive list):
1. COVID-19 may have come from nature, as many claim. These things happen, and have happened before, as with the Black Plague and Ebola. This may be the most likely explanation, but it's still not certain.
2. COVID-19 may have escaped accidentally from a bioweapons research lab, and as such, it may have spread first in Wuhan, regardless of where it had been beforehand (US, China, or elsewhere). This is a less likely explanation, but as with Lyme Disease, such things have happened before.
3. COVID-19 may have been intentionally released for some reason. Although unlikely, it's not impossible.
Besides the probable case of Lyme Disease that David Swanson describes, taken from Kris Newby's book, there have been other bioweapon accidents, some known and perhaps even more unknown. The largest known was an anthrax release in Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union as recently as 1979. It's believed that as many as 100 died. There have been numerous incidents of smaller accidents in the US as well, which are of great concern to some. In addition, the New Mexico nuclear testing seems to have had accidental effects on people nearby simply due to lack of understanding of the fallout. This is less true of the Nevada testing, when more was know, but great negilence seems to have been involved.
Was it from nature, human accident, or intentionally planted? We don't know. But some possibilities are more likely than others. And as Shakespeare knew well, and had Horatio voice, people will believe what they want to believe, projecting their assumptions, cherry-picking what they hear and read, and generally "botch"-up what they see, hear, and read to fit it all "to their own thoughts."
If we hear someone claiming with great certitude that COVID-19 was intentionally released as a bioweapon to decrease the planet’s surplus population (as Dickens’ Scrooge might say), we would be right to accuse them of plucking the heart of a mystery, because this is not known.
By the same logic, we might note that too many non-scientists blindly trust the media’s claims that one or another country (usually the other country) is responsible. This is not based on science, but on a leap of faith.
MEANS, MOTIVE, OPPORTUNITY
When investigating crimes, people often think in terms of means, motive, and opportunity:
Means:
Did the US and/or China have the means (the scientific knowledge, the laboratories, the equipement) to develop COVID-19?
Probably.
Motive:
Unless a virus sample accidentally escaped, did they have motive to use it intentionally?
Unknown. Unless some feared that things like Global Climate Change would kill too many, and would have to be dealt with by “culling the herd” of the world’s population by means of a pandemic arriving at the needed time?
Opportunity:
The Chinese claim the US may have brought the virus to Wuhan during war games there in the fall of 2019. If it were intentional, would it be more likely to have been released by the US in China, than by China on their own population first? Or would that be convenient cover for a Chinese government-planted virus?
The rich and powerful often use times of crisis to take advantage of the chaos to advance their own wealth and control, as Naomi Klein describes in her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
.
Sometimes such crises happen on their own. This seems to have been the case with the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; the rich and powerful may not have caused it, but many certainly tried to take advantage of all the beachfront property that had been wiped out in its wake. It may also have been the case in the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor before the start of the Spanish-American war. It may have been the heat, and spontaneous combustion of ammunition stored on the ship.
WE DON’T KNOW
The fact is, especially for non-scientists, we simply don’t know where it came from, nor do we know what it would take to achieve an unbiased scientific consensus on the question. We know that some governments have the means to develop and deploy such viruses, even as Lyme Disease and Anthrax originally came from nature, but were further developed and weaponized in labs.
If we avoid the hubris of unwarranted certitude - avoid plucking the heart of the mystery - we might admit as much. We know nature can be deadly. But we also know (as with Lyme Disease) that sometimes “purposes mistook” can fall “on th' inventors' heads” (5.2.3879-80), and cause collateral damage as well: As Hamlet notes,
“I have shot my arrow o'er the house
And hurt my brother”
A WORLD AND TIME OUT-OF-JOINT
So while our priorities might include preventing transmission and care for the sick while striving to carry on while washing hands and practicing social distancing, perhaps we can ponder, too, how out-of-joint the world has been in its weapons research. That research is currently led by (or funded most by) the US, which has a military budget that (depending on how one counts it) may be greater than all of its enemies and allies, combined, or by more conservatively determined estimates, at least the next seven biggest spending countries.
Covert operators like Claudius, or Heinrich Himmler, or Allen Dulles, or the planners of the Trojan Horse, seem to be especially in demand in a world governed by Realpolitik, where, even during the Obama era, the US spied on not only its allies, but also its enemies, monitoring phone, email, and internet use. In spite of treaties against chemical and biological weapons, we still have many things to fix.
As Hamlet says, the time is out of joint. We must work to transcend the biases that might blind us to mysterious elements of concerning events that are unfolding, bearing in mind the mistakes and darker moments of our history. Where our world is corrupt and out of joint, we must resolve to set it right.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Quotes from Hamlet are taken from InternetShakespeare, Modern Version, edited by David Bevington.
Disclaimer: When I note bible passages in this blog, I do not intending to promote any religion over any other, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general. Only to point out how the Bible may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subscribing.
Claudius used “juice of cursed hebona in a vial” to kill his brother, a kind of chemical- or bio-weapon. But he lied: government propaganda claimed his brother was bitten by a snake, blaming nature for the killing.
In our own time, Chinese officials claim COVID-19 was brought to China intentionally by the US military during war games there in October, 2019, after a bioweapons lab in the US failed an inspection and was closed that August.
The US (US-friendly media) claim the virus came from a bat and a market where wild meat was sold (as if from a snake in nature’s garden).
Nature creates many deadly viruses. But many countries, including the US, have a history of taking germs from nature and developing them as bioweapons. (A recent book notes that Lyme Disease may have accidentally escaped from a bioweapons lab at Plum Island on the US east coast that was researching insects like ticks as bioweapon-delivery systems).
So while China and the US have their propaganda war about the source of COVID-19, what’s a non-scientist to do?
What might holding the mirror of the play up to these aspects our times reveal?]
Scholars have long noted various differences between King Hamlet and his brother and murderer, Claudius: King Hamlet is, in the minds of some, more honest and honorable. We are told that he was challenged to fight Old Fortinbras of Norway in “single combat” - meaning their armies were spared many deaths while the leaders fought it out between themselves. At least, this is the way Danes liked to think, or were encouraged to think, about their dead king.
Claudius, on the other hand, is more covert in his methods. He uses poison to kill his brother and lies about it, saying his brother was bitten by a snake while napping in his garden.
Some see the contrast between brothers as a contrast between a nostalgic view of a bygone era of honor and authentic masculinity, represented by King Hamlet, and a less virtuous, more cynical and Machiavellian era that followed. There may be some truth in that, but it’s very problematic: Even the legendary Trojan horse of the Greeks of a much older era represented covert methods more akin to Claudius than to what is perhaps an illusory and overly-nostalgic view of King Hamlet.
And King Hamlet was no saint: He was too busy with his exploits of honor to be present at the birth of his son, born the same day he fought Fortinbras to the death, risking his life and the possibility that he would become a permanently absent father to the prince. His killing of Fortinbras set in motion the chain of events that would later result in Young Fortinbras raising an army against Denmark, at first without permission of his uncle, but later perhaps with his uncle’s blessing, financial backing, and covert support for an attack on Denmark disguised as a war against Poland, with permission to march through Denmark, supposedly on the way to Poland:
...old Norway, overcome with joy,
Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee
And his commission to employ those soldiers
So levied, as before, against the Polack,
With an entreaty herein further shown
That it might please you to give quiet pass
Through your dominions for his enterprise
On such regards of safety and allowance
As therein are set down. (2.2.1097-1105)
So it may be unrealistic dreaming to assume that old King Hamlet, Old Fortinbras, and the uncle, old Norway, are the only honorable and honest leaders, while Claudius is the only villain who makes use of covert methods. Some scholars have preferred to view Hamlet this way, with the dead king representing something like what Tom Brokow’s best-selling book calls “The Greatest Generation,”
and Claudius representing something like the way former CIA Director Allen Dulles is described in David Talbot’s book, The Devil’s Chessboard.
CONFIRMATION BIAS
But we all tend to project what we expect or would like to find in what we perceive. This is true of audience members at a play, of scholars analyzing literature, and also of characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
In 3.2, Hamlet and Polonius have their memorable exchange about clouds:
HAMLET: Do you see that cloud? That's almost in shape / like a camel.
POLONIUS: By th' mass, and it's like a camel indeed.
HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.
POLONIUS: It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET: Or like a whale?
POLONIUS: Very like a whale. (3.2.2247-52)
This exchange demonstrates not only how we project what we want to see onto what we perceive, but also how Polonius is too willing to agree with the prince in public, while also scheming to distrust and spy on him.
There is a similar exchange in 4.5 regarding Horatio’s observations about how people interpret Ophelia’s madness:
HORATIO: ...Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move
The hearers to collection; they aim at it,
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts… (4.5.2752-5)
When we botch up what we perceive to fit our own thoughts, or project our own desires on others and events, this sometimes takes the form of “confirmation bias,”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
when we cherry-pick information, or in other words, seek only or mostly what confirms our expectations.
PLUCKING THE HEART OF MYSTERY
We all interpret the world through the lens of past experience. This is necessary: Our past experience helps us make sense of new experience.
But new experiences always differ in some ways from old ones. There is an element of mystery in new experience, and if we assume all new experience is merely a repeat of the old, we will miss out on some of the reality unfolding around us while we are imprisoned in an endless tape-loop of past experience.
So If we are too set in our certitude that new experience is basically the same as old experience, in effect, we are plucking the heart of the mystery of experience: We are taking what is new and real and perhaps different in subtle ways from the past and from our biases, and blinding ourselves from it by way of a lie we tell ourselves: We assume we already know, we already understand this event or this person. So why pay careful attention? We are too happy in our nutshells, being kings and queens of infinite space. But perhaps eventually we will be jolted out of our slumber by bad dreams?
HAMLET: Oh, God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. (2.2.1300-2)
CLAUDIUS: LIES TO COVER CHEMICAL/BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
After poisoning his brother, Claudius disguises the murder with a lie. The ghost explains it this way:
It's given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forgèd process of my death
Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown. (1.5.722-7)
When people experienced in spy craft and covert military operations perform some covert act, especially if the act and its consequences are not totally shrouded in secret, lies are required to cover the deed. Claudius has successfully pulled off a coup, resulting in an overthrow of Denmark’s government. It’s a nearly bloodless coup in that his brother is the only fatality.
We might note also that the lie doesn’t claim the king had a heart attack, or that he was climbing his favorite tree in his orchard and fell when a branch broke. Such lies might stray too far from the evidence of the murder. The king was killed by a substance that invaded his body and poisoned him.
The ghost describes it this way:
Sleeping within mine orchard,
My custom always in the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour, thy uncle stole
With juice of cursèd hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distillment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigor it doth posset
And curd like eager droppings into milk
The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine,
And a most instant tetter baked about
Most lazarlike with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body. (1.5.744-58)
Such effects don’t follow a heart attack or a fall from a tree.
The ghost claims that the poison was a “leperous distilment” that made his skin turn “lazar-like,” referring to the gospel tale of the rich man who ignores the beggar at his door whose body is covered in sores licked by dogs. People of Shakespeare’s time assumed that the beggar was a leper, and leper-houses (or houses for people with skin diseases) had long been called “Lazar-houses.”
Note also that the poison Claudius used seems to have been not only chemical, but biological in origin. It may be a distilled liquid, but it seems to have come from a plant (a “botanical substance”).
Apothecaries may have studied and developed poisons in Shakespeare’s time and earlier in order to fight infestations of rats and other pests or vermin (or in other words, for “defensive” purposes), but it was always inevitable that such poisons would sometimes be used to murder, and on other occassions, the apothocaries themselves, or their families and friends, or innocent bystanders, may sometimes have been accidentally ingested: The family dog or an unattended infant finds and eats rat poison, and there are unintended casualties, or what military strategists sometimes call “collateral damage.”
To some, it might seem both a cruel irony and an example of bad karma, that a poisoner of vermin might die, or lose a family pet or infant child, by way of a concoction of their own design.
Horatio states this general idea in the final scene of the play when he speaks of “purposes mistook / Fall'n on th' inventors' heads” (5.2.3879-80):
HORATIO: ...give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placèd to the view,
And let me speak to th'yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning, and forced cause,
And in this upshot, purpose mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.
(5.2.3872-81)
In the dramatic economy of the stage, for Shakespeare as for Seneca, it was helpful and cathartic for the audience if evildoers suffer the consequences of their own evil actions, and sometimes best if their plans finally backfire upon them. But in Hamlet, of course, this is not without considerable collateral damage: Polonius may suffer the consequences of his own scheming, but the deaths of Ophelia and Gertrude seem especially undeserved, and perhaps Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as well, though perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent.
PLUCKING THE MYSTERY OF COVID-19
What might all of this have to do with the current Coronavirus, or COVID-19? Government lies about deadly bioweapons? What government would ever do such a thing? I beg your patience as I unravel some thoughts.
[image: CDC]
President Trump likes to call the virus a “Chinese virus,” even crossing out “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” in the text of his prepared remarks and changing it to “Chinese virus” - in spite of incidents of hate and violence against Asian-Americans and the best advice of some around him.
In terms of bias, Trump and some in the US would like to view the virus as Chinese, perhaps in part because they view China as an economic and military enemy of the US, in spite of the fact that many Americans buy goods made in China that are less costly in part because they are made there, and CEOs of American corporations profit exponentially from this. Low-paid American workers may love the cheap goods, but blame the Chinese for keeping their wages down. CEOs may take advantage of the economic opportunities, but know that as China’s fortunes rise with its economic power, their own fortunes may fall if they don’t act wisely.
Meanwhile, some officials in China have raised questions about the origins of the virus, claiming it originated not in China but in the US. The stark contrast between Trump’s view and that of these Chinese officials brings to mind what Horatio says in the opening act of Hamlet:
HORATIO:
At least the whisper goes so: our last King,
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras… (1.1.97-103)
Horatio knows that these are whispers, and that there may certainly be a difference between the way inhabitants and soldiers in Denmark, on the one hand, view these events, and how the people of Norway may view them.
Later in the same speech, Horatio observes,
HORATIO: ...Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimprovèd mettle, hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of landless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't, which is no other
(And it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us by strong hand
And terms compulsative those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. (1.1.112-21)
His parenthetical statement, “it doth well appear unto our state,” acknowledges that other states - especially including Norway - may view things differently. This is a helpful observation, and seems to apply not only to Denmark and Norway, but also to the US and China: In Denmark, certainly, the Danish view was repeatedly promoted not only by the throne, but also (in the play’s fictional world, we might imagine) by the press of the time.
And so we get a long list of US media outlets, and those of close allies, promoting the US view that the virus came from China, and that China’s claims are lies and propaganda. To include just a few, this is the view of
The New York Times,
CNN,
ABC News,
USA Today,
Foreign Policy Magazine,
MarketWatch,
Business Insider,
The Guardian (based in the UK, a close US ally),
and countless others.
If so many large and important media outlets agree, then does this prove it's true? Or does it prove that all of these western corporate media outlets have the same economic interests to defend?
If an untruth is repeated many times, even if many come to believe it is true, does that in itself make it true? How can both non-scientists, and scientists unaware of the research, know what is true about this?
It’s interesting that there’s so little variation in point of view, and that most of these articles are basically substance-free, not based on scientific evidence or scientific debate, but based entirely on promoting the American view in the face of the Chinese, which is viewed as untruthful. It’s almost as if we are still living in a Cold War context, where the CIA had assets inside of every domestic media outlet (and some foreign ones as well) in an official program known as “Operation Mockingbird,”
making sure that a certain desired American point of view would be promoted on important issues. Of foreign publications during the era of Mockingbird, for example, even the Paris Review was infiltrated and used by the CIA, as many have noted.
Modern methods for promoting the preferred national view dwarf the efforts and methods of Claudius and Denmark in comparison. The view preferred by Claudius was that his brother died after being bitten by a snake. And true or not, the preferred view of the US is that the virus came from China.
So pay no attention to that man behind the curtain: The Great Oz has spoken.*
via GIPHY
(In the Hollywood film, The Wizard of Oz, near the end of the film, they main character, Dorothy, notices that there is a man behind a curtain who seems to be controlling the frightening official spectacle she is witnessing; he notices her noticing him and makes the spectacle tell her not to pay attention to it….)
Especially for people in the US, are we capable of thinking critically about repeated messages from the media, so flooded with media assumptions? Or are we like people with our little children’s buckets and toy shovels at the beach, when the tide is coming in? How can we compete? As they say, if one is like a fish in a fishbowl or the sea, how does one imagine that beings breathe anything but water? How can we imagine any other point of view beyond the opinions we constantly swim in?
SPYMASTERS AS LESS-THAN-HUMAN?
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius is a strange case: He seems to be either the spymaster of the realm, or to think he is. In his skepticism and scrutiny of others, at first (in 1.3) he assumes the worst regarding the prince and his intentions toward his daughter, assuming Hamlet is merely like Polonius himself was when younger, projecting his self-assumptions onto Hamlet. Later, when Ophelia (in the second half of 2.1) tells him of Hamlet’s unexpected visit to her closet, Polonius realizes he misjudged Hamlet and says he is sorry twice. Yet he never apologizes to Hamlet for misjudging him: He only ingratiates himself to Claudius and Gertrude, and encourages spying on Hamlet in order to see if in fact Hamlet is in love with his daughter, and if that is the source of his madness. In this way, Polonius seems a hollow man, a joke, a dysfunctional human being, in a way. And perhaps in this he is similar to some other spymasters, including Allen Dulles, as described by David Talbot in his previously mentioned book, The Devil’s Chessboard.
US BIOWEAPONS RESEARCH:
CANCER, BACTERIA, ANTHRAX, LYME DISEASE, & POSSIBLY COVID-19
The covert weapon of choice for Claudius was “juice of cursèd hebenon in a vial.”
How were such poisons tested for potential use on humans?
Of course, by other murderers.
But secret research of chemical and biological weapons has included a much wider range of substances than what was perhaps the fictional poison used by Claudius. Testing has been conducted by many nations, including the US and China. Treaties after the world wars supposedly banned such weapons and research, but allowed defensive research, meaning research supposedly to prepare defenses against such weapons. Yet that supposedly defensive research has long been recognized as “dual-purpose”: In researching how to defend against a range of chemical and biological agents, one also learns a great deal how to create and deploy such weapons.
To people unfamiliar with the history of US bioweapons research, it may seem like what many like to dismiss as “wild conspiracy theory” to speak of such things. But in fact much of the history is widely known and has been reported on for many years. “Conspiracy theory” is too often and too easily used to dismiss thinking about actual things people have conspired to do, and in many cases, repeatedly accomplished.
Senator Paul Wellstone’s Efforts
Some of this came to my own attention in part due to the efforts of a senator from my state, Paul Wellstone, who was very vocal in seeking the release of documents related to US testing of chemical and biological weapons on US and Canadian populations. Wellstone, along with two members of his family and others, were killed in a plane crash.
Biological Testing
Sometimes this involved the spraying of biological agents to see their effects on populations.
You can read more about the open-air germ warfare tests from the following sources:
The Washington Post (archives/”Army Conducted 239 Secret, Open-Air Germ Warfare Tests“)
Regarding a single such test in the San Francisco Bay area, Wikipedia (“Operation Sea Spray”)Regarding the efforts of the grandson of Edwin Nevin, who seems to have died from the spraying, to seek full government disclosure and justice, see “How the U.S. Government Tested Biological Warfare on America.”
Chemical testing
Sometimes testing involved the release, in dust form, of chemicals like zinc cadmium sulfide, possibly in radioactive form, from rooftops: The goal was to see how these substances would affect the population. But a side-effect in some cases may have been that people down-wind of the release showed higher incidence of cancers, stillbirths and miscarriages.
You can read an archived piece from The New York Times *here*.
You can also read about it in this 2012 article from LiveScience: “Did Army Spray Harmful Chemicals on US Cities?”
There was an official investigation and a report published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) but while they claimed much is not known about the effects of zinc cadmium sulfide, the report officially denied any connection with adverse health as a consequence of exposure to zinc cadmium sulfide specifically. This frees the government from any liability for harm to health, while still recognizing the fact that testing had been done without citizen consent.
Yet the US government denied adverse health effects of Agent Orange (a defoliant by the US during the war in Vietnam) so as to avoid liability for the government perhaps as well as for the manufacturers of the chemical. One source, notes,
In 1988, Dr. James Clary, an Air Force researcher associated with Operation Ranch Hand, wrote to Senator Tom Daschle, “When we initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. However, because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide.”
US denials and resistance also involved not only veteran health claims, but also denials about the chemical having been stored at a US base in Okinawa before being used in Vietnam.
Nuclear & Other Test-Substance Fallout: Corrupted X-ray Film?
But this does not answer the question of whether other substances were used in tests.
Not regarding chemical or biological testing, but rather, weapons testing in general, it is known that, because of open-air testing of atomic bombs in the US, radioactive material was carried on the wind and settled on fields where crops were grown and where cattle grazed, as well as in populated areas. This was later discovered in part because corn-based products had been used to separate pieces of x-ray film to be used in taking medical x-rays, but in certain years, a great deal of the x-ray film was corrupted because of the radio-active dust that had settled on the corn. You can read about that *here*.
In spite of known contamination of X-ray film from 1945 A-bomb testing, above-ground testing continued, not only on remote islands like the Bikini Atoll, but also in Nevada, where local residents downwind were repeatedly exposed to radioactive fallout before the full effects of the fallout were known. You can read more about the effects of the Nevada nuclear tests in
TIME Magazine, “When Mushroom Clouds Were All the Rage,”
At Quartz.com, “US nuclear tests killed far more civilians than we knew”(the original title of this article contained in the URL is, “US Nuclear Tests Killed American Civilians on as Scale Comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki”)
From the Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Nevada Test Site Downwinders”
From Common Dreams by way of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting), “50 Years Later, The Tragedy of Nuclear Tests in Nevada,” by Norman Solomon
These historical facts are not secret, have been reported on, and are not “wild conspiracy theories.”
Lyme Disease and Operation Paperclip
It is also known that, after World War II, the US and Russia were in a race to extract certain German scientists and intelligence experts from Germany, and the US also sought to use some of these Germans to remain behind and spy. Some of the scientists were used in the NASA program, but others were used in bioweapons research. This postwar US program was called Operation Paperclip: One can read short pieces about it at
Wikipedia,
History.com,
Or even a book review on the topic at the CIA website.
One quickly notices that these sources are much more willing to discuss former Nazi scientists helping in rocket development for NASA and its space program, but little or no mention is made of former Nazi scientists researching bioweapons in and for the US. One New York Post article is perhaps exceptional for its mention of the US picking up a Nazi chemical warfare scientist, Dr. Otto Ambros. Relative silence on Operation Paperclip-recruited Nazi scientists who worked on bioweapons may be at least in part because NASA and the US space program to put a man on the moon, and to put men and women in space, is a happy and glorious US program, while US bioweapons research is a darker and more shameful shadow in US history.
David Swanson helps shed light on this. Swanson was a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, worked for the presidential campaign of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation awarded him their 2018 Peace Prize. His blog is titled, “Let’s Try Democracy.”
Swanson has researched, for example, how former Nazi bioweapons experts were used at Plum Island, near the north-east side of Long Island, NY, and not far south of New London, Connecticut, and also Lyme, Connecticut, after which Lyme Disease is named. The Nazis had been researching the use of insects as bioweapons delivery systems, and this research continued under US supervision at Plum Island. In an article from May of 2019 called “Where Lyme Disease Came From and Why It Eludes Treatment,” Swanson cites a recent book by Kris Newby called Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons.
It turns out that the appearance of Lyme Disease near Lyme Connecticut and its identification in 1975 was too coincidentally close to the Plum Island facility, which had been researching the use of deer ticks as bioweapon delivery vehicles. It seems very possible that the experiments were not contained enough, and that some ticks may have escaped and hitched a ride to the mainland on the backs of deer that sometimes swim across to the island.
Anthrax
Using animals or insects to deliver bioweapons is not new: After the US anthrax scare in the fall of 2001, many noted that Japan experimented on the weaponizing of birds and animals in the period between the world wars. In their book, Beyond Anthrax: The Weaponization of Infectious Diseases,
editors Larry and Suzanne Lutwick observe that Japan and the US did not ratify certain chemical and biological weapons treaties after World War I, and during World War II, they dropped plague-infested rats, and also birds and bird-feathers dusted with anthrax over certain populated areas in China.
Initially after the US anthrax scare, it was determined that the anthrax had not come from Iraq as George Bush initially claimed, but rather, that it had come from Ft. Detrick in the US, where they do - you guessed it - bioweapons research. The type of anthrax in the letters mailed to specific members of congress and the media, according to initial investigations, was a very special type: The US developed a process of removing the static charge and milling anthrax into a very fine powder so that it could be airborne, not normally one of its characteristics.
It’s interesting to note that this would be the initial determination, but that later,
the official report claimed the anthrax did have a static charge, although it was of such a pure quality that it may have been obtained from a US bioweapons lab, and that the person who produced it “must have possessed significant technical skill” (14).
Many are unsure whether the final suspect, Bruce Ivins, was actually the person who prepared and/or sent the anthrax. As the article at the link notes, Ivins told a friend that he had no memory of doing any such thing, didn’t know now, and didn’t care to know how. He sounded a bit like Sirhan Sirhan, the confessed assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, who some say was brainwashed: Sirhan stood in front of RFK, facing him, when the shooting occurred, and yet the fatal shot came from the back of Kennedy’s head. Like Ivins, Sirhan remembered nothing of the shooting. And the CIA was known to have been researching various methods of mind-control (as in its MK-Ultra program, not a conspiracy theory but a historical fact).
COVID-19
More recently, David Swanson has written about the feud between the USA and China regarding the origins of COVID-19. In a recent blog article, Swanson explores some of the various more substantial claims regarding the source of the virus. The article, from March 27, is called “Is Coronavirus a bioweapon?” Swanson notes that there was bioweapon research going on in both the US, at places like Ft. Detrick, and also in Wuhan. So he then discusses some scientific sources that may connect COVID-19 to both Wuhan and the US. It’s concerning.
Many have noted that, in early August of 2019, The New York Times and other newspapers and media outlets (including the New York Post, based on the NYTimes piece) reported that the bioweapons research facility at Ft. Detrick was shut down because it failed to pass a CDC inspection, a curious and concerning detail. Some claim a virus that caused fever, aches, and pneumonia escaped from the lab at Ft. Detrick and may have been brought to Wuhan during war games there observed by the US. In fact, my wife and I caught a virus in November of last year that included all of these symptoms, and I have heard of many others who did as well. That doesn’t prove any COVID-19 connection, but it makes one wonder.
On March 17, in the Asia Times published an essay by Pedro Escobar called “China locked in hybrid war with US: Fallout from Covid-19 outbreak puts Beijing and Washington on a collision course.” Escobar also mentions Ft. Detrick and the speculation about the source of the virus.
In Hamlet terms, all of this might seem like identifying the poison that killed the king, and striving to find the apothecary who was the source, in the hope that the apothecary might be convinced to blame Claudius.
But so far, especially for those of us who are non-scientists, we just don’t yet know. And meanwhile, the media blathers on about claims from the US and China, and one might find that it’s as likely to believe the US was responsible if one lives in China as it is to believe that China was responsible if one lives in the US.
If it were only a high school football game, the role of the citizens of each nation might be merely to cheer for their own side and for the views that are most favorable to their own team. But this is not a game. Lives are at stake.
PLUCKING THE HEART OF THE MYSTERY
In Act 3, scene 2, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing
you make of me! You would play upon me, you would
seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart
of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest
note to the top of my compass, and there is much
music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot
you make it. Why, do you think that I am easier to be
played on than a pipe?
(3.2.2234-41)
Not all viruses come from China. Even the flu, long thought to come from China, may have come from Southeast Asian tropics. But because of the totalitarian government there, some believe deaths from disease may be habitually under-reported.
And illnesses do not come only from wild animals that are hunted and brought to Chinese markets. Some in the US have contracted Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) from eating wild venison, and many others have likely contracted Lyme Disease.
If we strive to respect the mystery rather than pluck its heart, we might categorize some possibilities (while noting that this is not an exhaustive list):
1. COVID-19 may have come from nature, as many claim. These things happen, and have happened before, as with the Black Plague and Ebola. This may be the most likely explanation, but it's still not certain.
2. COVID-19 may have escaped accidentally from a bioweapons research lab, and as such, it may have spread first in Wuhan, regardless of where it had been beforehand (US, China, or elsewhere). This is a less likely explanation, but as with Lyme Disease, such things have happened before.
3. COVID-19 may have been intentionally released for some reason. Although unlikely, it's not impossible.
Besides the probable case of Lyme Disease that David Swanson describes, taken from Kris Newby's book, there have been other bioweapon accidents, some known and perhaps even more unknown. The largest known was an anthrax release in Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union as recently as 1979. It's believed that as many as 100 died. There have been numerous incidents of smaller accidents in the US as well, which are of great concern to some. In addition, the New Mexico nuclear testing seems to have had accidental effects on people nearby simply due to lack of understanding of the fallout. This is less true of the Nevada testing, when more was know, but great negilence seems to have been involved.
Was it from nature, human accident, or intentionally planted? We don't know. But some possibilities are more likely than others. And as Shakespeare knew well, and had Horatio voice, people will believe what they want to believe, projecting their assumptions, cherry-picking what they hear and read, and generally "botch"-up what they see, hear, and read to fit it all "to their own thoughts."
If we hear someone claiming with great certitude that COVID-19 was intentionally released as a bioweapon to decrease the planet’s surplus population (as Dickens’ Scrooge might say), we would be right to accuse them of plucking the heart of a mystery, because this is not known.
By the same logic, we might note that too many non-scientists blindly trust the media’s claims that one or another country (usually the other country) is responsible. This is not based on science, but on a leap of faith.
MEANS, MOTIVE, OPPORTUNITY
When investigating crimes, people often think in terms of means, motive, and opportunity:
Means:
Did the US and/or China have the means (the scientific knowledge, the laboratories, the equipement) to develop COVID-19?
Probably.
Motive:
Unless a virus sample accidentally escaped, did they have motive to use it intentionally?
Unknown. Unless some feared that things like Global Climate Change would kill too many, and would have to be dealt with by “culling the herd” of the world’s population by means of a pandemic arriving at the needed time?
Opportunity:
The Chinese claim the US may have brought the virus to Wuhan during war games there in the fall of 2019. If it were intentional, would it be more likely to have been released by the US in China, than by China on their own population first? Or would that be convenient cover for a Chinese government-planted virus?
The rich and powerful often use times of crisis to take advantage of the chaos to advance their own wealth and control, as Naomi Klein describes in her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
.
Sometimes such crises happen on their own. This seems to have been the case with the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; the rich and powerful may not have caused it, but many certainly tried to take advantage of all the beachfront property that had been wiped out in its wake. It may also have been the case in the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor before the start of the Spanish-American war. It may have been the heat, and spontaneous combustion of ammunition stored on the ship.
WE DON’T KNOW
The fact is, especially for non-scientists, we simply don’t know where it came from, nor do we know what it would take to achieve an unbiased scientific consensus on the question. We know that some governments have the means to develop and deploy such viruses, even as Lyme Disease and Anthrax originally came from nature, but were further developed and weaponized in labs.
If we avoid the hubris of unwarranted certitude - avoid plucking the heart of the mystery - we might admit as much. We know nature can be deadly. But we also know (as with Lyme Disease) that sometimes “purposes mistook” can fall “on th' inventors' heads” (5.2.3879-80), and cause collateral damage as well: As Hamlet notes,
“I have shot my arrow o'er the house
And hurt my brother”
A WORLD AND TIME OUT-OF-JOINT
So while our priorities might include preventing transmission and care for the sick while striving to carry on while washing hands and practicing social distancing, perhaps we can ponder, too, how out-of-joint the world has been in its weapons research. That research is currently led by (or funded most by) the US, which has a military budget that (depending on how one counts it) may be greater than all of its enemies and allies, combined, or by more conservatively determined estimates, at least the next seven biggest spending countries.
Covert operators like Claudius, or Heinrich Himmler, or Allen Dulles, or the planners of the Trojan Horse, seem to be especially in demand in a world governed by Realpolitik, where, even during the Obama era, the US spied on not only its allies, but also its enemies, monitoring phone, email, and internet use. In spite of treaties against chemical and biological weapons, we still have many things to fix.
As Hamlet says, the time is out of joint. We must work to transcend the biases that might blind us to mysterious elements of concerning events that are unfolding, bearing in mind the mistakes and darker moments of our history. Where our world is corrupt and out of joint, we must resolve to set it right.
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Quotes from Hamlet are taken from InternetShakespeare, Modern Version, edited by David Bevington.
Disclaimer: When I note bible passages in this blog, I do not intending to promote any religion over any other, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general. Only to point out how the Bible may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
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